The invention relates to livestock pest control products and methods, and more particularly to an avian medicament and/or pest control product and method. A number of additional features and objects will be apparent in connection with the following discussion of preferred embodiments and examples.
In this country as elsewhere there are considerable industries in the “farming” of certain avian species. For example the poultry industry includes without limitation the production of chickens and turkeys among other birds, but the production of chicken and turkey livestock can be truly large scale. Perhaps 450 million turkeys are produced annually in the U.S., or something like 1½ turkeys annually per person. On a greater scale still, the annual U.S. production of chickens is billions and billions. Naturally enough there is a commercial niche for servicing the medicament and pest control needs of these birds.
For example, a common widespread pest that bedevils the poultry industry is a rather minute parasite, the northern fowl mite (Ornithonyssus sylviarum). The northern fowl mite is indeed a major pest. It is a blood-feeder and, because of its bites and blood-feeding effects, infestations cause much irritation as well as blood-loss to the point of varying degrees of anemia. Notwithstanding the problems experienced by the birds, the northern fowl mite is also a pest to humans too: namely the poultry workers. Most notably this is seen in table-egg laying operations.
By way of background, poultry operations can be roughly classified into three categories. Broiler operations throughput the most birds of all and large-scale broiler operations rear thousands or so hatchlings at a time within close confines of pens or barns to a harvest age of about forty-two days. Large-scale table-egg laying operations can be characterized by hundreds or thousands of compact cages stacked and arrayed in huge blocks wherein each cage provides tightly cramped quarters for one to several hens for their fourteen month or so use life. Breeding operations (excluding artificial insemination operations) can be characterized by pens or barns of thousands of birds like broiler operations, except that a rooster to hen ratio of one for each ten or twelve is aimed for and that the livestock is retained for about fourteen months or so as in the case of table-egg laying operations.
To get back to table-egg laying operations, again the egg-laying hens are confined in compact cages arrayed in huge stacks or blocks of hundreds or thousands. A representative multi-occupant cage might measure three feet square by a foot tall (1 m2×30 cm). Alternatively, a reduced-size multi-occupant cage might measure about two feet by one-and-one-half feet rectangular (60 cm×45 cm) by ten inches (25 cm) or so tall. Such cramped quarters serve as multiple-occupancy units for say five or six hens at a time. As the hens do their work, the eggs roll or slide down gutters or chutes to conveyors. The conveyors transfer the eggs into egg-handling barns (or more simply, buildings) staffed by workers who might manually do any number of things including without limitation packing washed eggs into retail egg cartons. If the egg-laying hens are suffering an infestation of northern fowl mites, the fowl mites swarm over the hens including around her egg-laying vent. As a hen produces an egg a certain number of mites hitchhike a ride. Regardless how the mites actually get on the egg, the mites hitchhike their way into the egg-handling barn and once there, readily jump off onto everything along the way including the workers. Needless to say the mites bite and irritate the workers as savagely as they do the hens.
The losses to the egg-laying operation are multiple. Infested hens generally perform below levels they could meet if healthier and so egg-producing capacity falls below optimum. Also, the workers are now involved and their complaints require the operations management to provide a fix. However, the options over what to do are not without costs, losses and other problems. The conventional ways to control northern fowl mites is with control agents which are referred to variously as insecticides, acaricides, or miticides. Treatment methods conventionally include having workers spray the birds or dip the birds, or alternatively providing dust bins of the stuff and letting the birds do the job themselves. Problems relate to the fact that these agents are quite often noxious and contaminants. These agents pose moderate health problems to the birds if inhaled over long periods of time or ingested by being mixed in with the feed or water. These agents also pose moderate health problems to workers by exposure through either inhalation or skin contact. Many of the chemical compounds found in various popular control agents are also environmental contaminants. Hence workers and/or environmental protection authorities indeed want or in actual fact have varying say over the scope of use of some of the control measures. More significantly, in table-egg laying operations, since egg shells are moderately porous then the avoidance of contaminating table eggs is paramount.
Given that background, the popular treatment methods of the prior art can now be quickly re-examined, this time for their relative shortcomings. Dust bins are not truly a workable option for cages. The birds are simply too confined. Whatever dust they ruffle up that doesn't stick in their feathers is free to drift about and suffer consequences on whatever it lands and thus is really an escaped contaminant. That is, the drift might land in the birds' feed, their water, perhaps on their eggs, or otherwise float around in clouds to be inhaled by the birds and workers alike or else simply float away and find itself in the surrounding litter or other substrates on which the birds are being raised. This contaminated material is subsequently spread on crop-land or grass pasture, and hence the contaminants can find their way into the ground water or surrounding watercourses. Spraying is a comparable “broad” application technique that is comparably plagued by escaping clouds of dust. Yet with spraying and even more so with dipping, these techniques require greater manpower to carry out.
What is needed is a reliable and economical medicament and/or pest control product and method for overcoming the problems of the prior art and in order to improve overall health, safety and productivity in connection with the poultry industry including improving working conditions for workers as well as safety for the environment and consumers.